Meta Robots query
-
Hi guys,
I was ranking really well on my home page for certain keywords which has all dropped pretty dramatically over the last 3/4 weeks - I think the issue is since since the configuration of Yoast SEO Wordpress plugin.
In March (when my rankings were strong) my crawl test showed the top data in the attached image, and in May (now the rankings have dropped severly) they show the bottom data.
I don't fully understand canonical and Meta Robots so I am hoping someone can shed some light on the following points.
1. Will the change result in my loss of rankings.
2. How can I put it back to how it was in March?PS. I haven't had any Google penalties.
Thanks,
Joshua -
Hi Joshua
Thanks, I see the ranking drop. However, have you lost traffic? I see most positions were on the 2nd page to begin with. I see this quite often, when sites don't rank on page #1, the rankings can drop/jump a lot around pages 2-5. I know it's not fun seeing a "drop" but ultimately I would focus on your traffic as a mindset.
I ask if this is a fairly new site, because it's a super competitive niche, and I'm surprised it ranked that well to begin with. If it's a new site, often Google will rank it higher for a little while to see how users react to it, and then it may settle back to a more "normal" ranking.
I'd also check your Search Analytics report in Search Console - do you see Impression and Position drops across the board? It's tempting to analyze only a few top keywords, but I'd try to look at things as a whole too.
-
Hi Joshua
The noodp would not be playing a role in this. It only instructs Google to not use data from the Open Directory Project in snippets, but has no other effect at all.
-
Rankings drop:
On April 14th all of these rankings dropped on the same day by 10+ places and have got worse since.
-
Hi Dan,
The issue seems to be that since I installed Yoast SEO and have had sitewide noodp activated that the rankings have dropped.
Do you think this could be playing a part?
Thanks,
Joshua
-
Hi Joshua
The settings look OK - what keywords were you ranking for that have now dropped? Also, when was the site launched?
-Dan
-
Can anyone help further with this?
-
Hi Eric,
Thanks a lot for your reply.
I wonder how it is possible that when the website was set to block robots, no index & follow and no rel-canonical it was ranking really well and since the change it has severly dropped?
What are the best settings to have for my home page which has most of the backlinks pointing to it?
Thanks,
Joshua -
Joshua, it looks as if you turned on the canonical tag on a certain page. Usually you will have the canonical tag added to a page when it's generating duplicate content--and you want that page to be considered to be "combined" with the page you're "canonicaling" to.
So, if you have a product that comes in several colors, those "color" pages will canonical back to the main product page.
The meta noindex, follow tag really shouldn't be used in most cases, if you're going to stop the search engines from indexing a page on your site, you should consider if you really need that page on the site anyway.
In the screen shot you provide, you're not giving me enough information about which pages on your site you're canonicaling from--so I can't give you specific advice on that. But to answer your question, these settings can definitely affect rankings.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why Only Our Homepage Can Be Crawled Showing a Redirect Message as the Meta Title
Hello Everyone, So recently when we checked our domain using a Moz Crawl Test and Screaming Frog only the homepage comes up and the meta title says “You are being redirected to…”. We have several pages that used to come up and when submitting them to GSC no issues come up. The robots.txt file looks fine as well. We thought this might be ‘server’ related but it’s a little out of our field of expertise so we thought we would find out if anyone has any experience with this (ideas of reasons, how to check…etc.) or any potential suggestions. Any extra insight would be really appreciated. Please let us know if there is anything we could provide further details for that might. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thanks in advance. Best,
Moz Pro | | Ben-R0 -
What is the best way to add a noindex./nofollow meta tags to tags in a blog?
Could anyone tell me the best way to add noindex./nofollow meta tags as I have around 12 duplicate tags in a blog. I have the Yoast SEO plugin - unpaid version.
Moz Pro | | SEM_at_Lees0 -
Spammy Directories Using Title Meta-Tag For Link
I've been noticing a growing amount of spammy directories using my title Meta-Tag to create a link back to my site. Since my title uses competitive keywords, these external links on spammy directories look over optimized and I fear an algo penalty might get triggered. Should I be concerned and what can I do?
Moz Pro | | alrockn0 -
Exact match .ORG/.INFO vs. all query terms .COM - proof?
Hello world 🙂 I have searched among tons of quality articles here on forums, but surprisingly I haven't found topic that goes into the deep water when it comes to a specific KW rich domain problem. Let me first state that I'm mainly based this topic on the information found in following blog posts by randfish (that guru with the beard). http://www.seomoz.org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements My questions is only related to RANKING aspect of the domains - NOT how is sounds, smell or dance. As all good simple .COM KW domain combinations are already taken, only thing that is left is to be a bit creative using non .COMs exact match, hyphens .COM exact match, all query terms .COM with a letter or word added etc. QUESTION and case study I found a good keyword phrase, let us called it 'super domain' with low competition & high monthly searches and great revenue possibilities. Naturally, first step is to acquire a exact match .COM domain (EMD). But, of course, that is not possible because 'superdomain.com' and super-domain.com has already been taken by some greedy domain broker waiting someone to pay $1.000.000 for it. Not an option. What options do I got? OPT1) superdomainA.COM (keyword phrase with added 'A' at the end) OR OPT2) superdomain.ORG/NET/INFO (keyword phrase on non .COM TLD) I couldn't find any studies with test and clear results regarding this subject. This is VERY important because, regarding to the links I posted, there is a 0.10 better correlation if choosing OPT1) superdomainA.COM, even if using exact match domain OPT2) superdomain.ORG/NET. But they haven't been cross tested in that results in the same post. So it's big '?' sign to me. As SEO market is getting more and more competitive, it is important to not leave anything to chance. I would appreciate if randfish, or anybody else could give some inputs about this. Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | RetroOnline0 -
Meta keywords no longer in use
Can someone point me to the official article explaining why meta keywords are no longer taken into account by search engines please? I know Moz has indicated that search engines ignore them, but I would like to read a bit more about it - what was the reason behind it and since when.
Moz Pro | | coremediadesign0 -
Crawl Diagnostics shows two title and meta tag errors but they are false positives.
I got one hit each on "Missing Meta Description Tag" and "Title Missing or Empty" but in the source of my page they are clearly there: <title>Protein Powder | Compare and Get the Best Prices</title> <meta name="keywords" content="protein powder, whey protein, protein supplement, whey protein isolate, hydrolyzed whey" /> I understand there are conventions which may or may not be followed by Drupal (I read an earlier question where ordering and W3C conventions were suggested) but i'm not sure how to fix them given Drupal will just overwrite any hand editing the next time something is built and importantly, I can't get the crawl to work on cue - it works on the automatic once a week crawl in the main campaign summary but every time I've specifically used the Crawl Test tool it gives me a "There was an error submitting your request to the crawler. Please try again later" so I can't really test any changes. Given Google seems to be recognising the title tag - ie showing it in the results - Do I put this down as seomoz just not working? Kind Regards, Brian
Moz Pro | | btrr690 -
How does SEOMoz get ranking data? is it automated queries to Google?
Google's terms don't allow automated queries without Google's permission. https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66357 How does SEOMoz get ranking data then? Is it sending automated queries with or without Google's permission? is it violating Google's guideline? Will it affect my site performance as far as rankings?
Moz Pro | | huangyouyou1170 -
Why does the crawl report say I should have meta description and title tags in my xml files?
Just had my first crawl report today which has been very useful in finding missing and duplicated title tags and meta descriptions but it has flagged up the fact that my xml files are missing these. Surely non HTML documents shouldn't have them (or need them) so why are they showing up in the report?
Moz Pro | | PandyLegend0